It’s holiday time! Dust off those holiday school resources, and let’s plan the most epic holiday seasons ever!
My stomach is rumbling just thinking about all the food and decoration and lights and …. food! The holidays bring so much cheer and excitement as families celebrate different holidays, share traditions, and gather together to celebrate what has been a year none of us will soon forget.
With the many other changes 2020 has brought upon us, we can expect some changes to our holiday traditions. In the classroom, one tradition that may be missing this year is the annual holiday party.
Whether you are tearing up or internally cheering about not planning the holiday party for your class this year, you can still integrate the holidays into other activities throughout the season. Here are some party-free holiday school resources perfect for bringing some cheer to your holiday season.
Holiday School Resources
1 | Thanksgiving and Fall Resources
Unofficially, some people believe the holiday season kicks off with Halloween, but for me, the holidays begin with Thanksgiving celebrations. We have a couple of good resources to use those weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday kicks off (usually mid-week). I’m not going to list them all here because we’ve already written a blog post all about Thanksgiving resources, so click this link to learn more about our fall resources.
2 | Seasonal Close Reads with Mystery Pictures
Are you needing your students to use both sides of their brains this season? Encourage them to get artistic as they complete these seasonally inspired close read passages with mystery pictures.
To make life a little easier for teachers, each resource includes three different passages each differentiated at three different reading levels. There are two nonfiction texts and one fiction text. Each text comes with 10 text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, graphic organizers, and a mystery grid picture.
We have three different sets that you can integrate into the classroom this holiday season. All three are available in print, and we are hurridly updating the others to digital versions, but the Christmas set is digitized and ready to send to students today! Are you wondering how students can ‘color’ mystery pictures digitally? Check out this blog post to learn all about it. Then, when you’re done. Take a deeper look into these three seasonal resources.
3 | Figurative Language Holiday Light Craftivity
If you’re looking for an activity that is both highly engaging and deeply entwined into your language arts skills, take a look at this Holiday Lights Craftivity. Students will practice identifying figurative language examples while creating holiday decorations for the classroom.
4 | School Break Mini Flipbook
This FREE School Break Mini Flipbook is great for all the school breaks happening between now and the new year. Available in both digital and print this free resource gets students writing and talking about their breaks and helps build that all-too-important culture and community in the classroom. Every student celebrates the season in different ways. Use this flipbook to learn more about your students, their home lives, and what their family believes is important this time of year.
With the holidays around the corner and the classroom looking a little different these days, it is nice to feel like you’ve got some good plans to keep students engaged and active during these final months of the year. So, whether the holiday party happens or not in your classroom, we can still keep the spirit of the season alive and well for our students from Thanksgiving to New Year.
